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PAGE 8—JULY I960—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
VIRGINIA
NAACP Asks Court To Reopen Prince Edward Schools
RICHMOND, Va.
cpHE National Assn, for the
Advancement of Colored Peo
ple moved in federal district court
to force the reopening of Prince
Edward County’s public schools.
(See “Legal Action.”)
Two Negro girls—one in Nor
folk and one in Floyd County—
became the first members of their
race to graduate from integrated
public schools in Virginia. (See
“School Boards and Schoolmen.”)
An executive committee of the
Southern Regional Education Board
has proposed establishing a lay com
mission to set major goals for higher
education in the South. (See “School
Boards and Schoolmen.”)
The NAACP launched a legal effort
June 10 to get a federal court order
requiring Prince Edward County to
operate public schools.
The county did not operate public
schools during the past year and no
funds have been appropriated for pub
lic schools next year.
The NAACP motion in federal dis
trict court at Richmond asked for per
mission to file a supplemental complaint
in the long-standing Prince Edward
segregation case. (Allen v. School
Board of Prince Edward County.)
The Negro organization said in its
brief that if the additional filing were
authorized, the court then would be
asked to:
1) Enjoin Prince Edward officials
from refusing to operate public schools.
2) Enjoin the officials from selling
or otherwise disposing of public school
property.
The NAACP told the court that Ne
gro children in the county are denied
free public education in violation of
rights guaranteed by the Virginia Con
stitution and the Fourteenth Amend
ment to the U. S. Constitution.
MOTIONS FILED
Later, motions pertaining to the case
were filed by T. J. Mcllwaine, county
superintendent of schools, and George
W. Palmer, the only remaining member
of the school board following resigna
tions of the other members.
Mcllwaine said the NAACP’s move
should be dismissed as far as it applied
to him, since he has no authority to
maintain or operate the public schools.
Palmer moved for a continuation of
the hearing on the NAACP motion,
mainly on the ground that the attor
neys who have been handling the
Prince Edward litigation have resigned
and that his new counsel need time
to study the case.
The NAACP motion was scheduled
for hearing June 27, but at that time
federal Judge Oren R. Lewis ordered
a postponement until July 29. Lewis,
who recently was sworn in as judge of
the court, said he wanted time to study
the briefs prior to the hearing.
(For other Prince Edward develop
ments, see “Community Action.”)
A state legislative committee won an
other round in its legal fight to force
the NAACP to reveal the names of its
Virginia members and to furnish other
data concerning its operations in this
state. (NAACP v. Committee on Of
fenses Against the Administration of
Justice.)
The State Supreme Court of Appeals
upheld the Richmond Circuit Court,
which had refused an NAACP request
for an injunction restraining the com
mittee from requiring the Negro group
to furnish the data sought.
Upholding the power of the commit
tee, the state’s high court said in its
opinion issued June 13 that “when
such a committee acts within the
bounds of its purpose, it acts as the
Legislature itself.” The court added
that the NAACP had failed to show
that the committee’s work would cause
the NAACP “irreparable injury.”
OVERRULED CONVICTION
The Hustings Court of Petersburg on
June 16 overruled a lower court con
viction of a Negro college student for
trespassing at the segregated Peters
burg public library. Judge Oliver A.
Pollard said, in clearing Virginus B.
Thornton, 22, of Virginia State College,
that “the evidence is not sufficient for
a conviction.”
Thornton and 10 other Negroes were
arrested for trespassing in the white
library. Since all 11 cases were paral
lel, Petersburg City Manager Roy F.
Ash indicated that efforts to prosecute
the other 10 Negroes would be dropped.
SCHOOL BOARDS
AND SCHOOLMEN
A Negro girl, Patricia Godbolt, grad
uated from the integrated Norview
High School June 9, ranking 52nd in
a class of 362.
On the following night, another Ne
gro, 18-year-old Daisy Penn, gradu
ated from the integrated Floyd High
School along with 41 whites.
Patricia was one of seven Negro stu
dents in a student body of more than
2,000. The Norfolk Journal and Guide
quoted her as saying she hopes to en
ter Smith College or Cornell Univer
sity, and that she has been accepted
for the 1960-61 year at Smith.
Daisy was one of nine Negroes at
tending Floyd High with about 350
whites. She reportedly will study nurs
ing in New York.
Norview High integrated in Febru
ary 1959, and Floyd High in January
1960.
TIED FOR FIRST
Miss Charlotte Wynn of Richmond
became the first member of her race
to receive the degree of bachelor of
science in nursing from the Medical
College of Virginia. Miss Wynn, who
was in a class with 30 white students,
tied for first place scholastically for
Mississippi
(Continued From Page 7)
House Bill 734 deals with false state
ments given to any federal executive,
legislative or judicial body. It provides
a maximum prison sentence of five
years and a maximum fine of $1,000 for
any false statement to any federal
agency, including the FBI and Civil
Rights Commission.
PROPOSED AMENDMENTS
Two proposed amendments to the
state constitution, to be voted on in
November, would:
1) Remove the mandatory provision
for state maintenance of a free public
school system. Section 201 would be
amended to provide that the Legisla
ture may, at its discretion, provide for
the maintenance and establishment of
free public schools for children within
specified ages, by taxation and other
wise, with such grades as may be pre
scribed by the Legislature. Section 205
would be changed to provide that the
Legislature may provide for the main
tenance and establishment of a free
public school or schools in each county
in the state with term or terms as the
Legislature may prescribe.
2) Amend Article 12 to provide an
additional qualification that a person
shall be “of good moral character to
register to vote.” A similar proposal
was rejected by the voters in 1952 be
cause it gives the county register (cir
cuit clerk) the power to determine a
person’s moral character.
The State Advisory Committee to the
U. S. Civil Rights Commission balked
at the latter’s request that the state
group make a statewide survey of
voter registrars.
Reason for the turn-down, as stated
by Rear Admiral (ret.) Robert P. Bris
coe of Liberty, was that it would “fo
ment ill-will against the committee.”
Briscoe said if his group undertook
such an inquiry “it would destroy any
goodwill that we have with the people
of Mississippi.”
The committee had been asked to
write the 82 county registrars and de
termine how the literacy test in the
state law is executed. The state group
suggested that the parent commission
seek the information.
Added to the commission was the
Rev. Richard Ellerbrake of Biloxi, pas
tor of the Back Bay Mission of the
Evangelical and Reform Church. The
chairman is the Rev. Murray Cox, re-
the conclusion of a three-day annual
workshop in Williamsburg.
The resolution now goes to the full
board, which will meet at the Southern
Governors’ Conference Sept. 25 at Hot
Springs, Ark.
The commission, composed of lay
men, would set up goals for the next
10 or 20 years. Members, who would be
appointed by the SREB, would be per
sons of such prominence that they
would be able to dramatize education’s
needs and to create public awareness
of southern goals.
The SREB is an agency through
which southern and border states in
effect pool their educational resources
for the benefit of all. The program en
ables students to study in other states
the subjects that are not available in
their own states. Last year 854 students
were involved in the program at a cost
to the states of $1,340,000. It is expected
that 1,032 will participate during the
coming year.
INTEGRATED SCHOOL’S FIRST NEGRO GRADUATE
Norfolk’s Patricia Godbolt Poses Before Graduation
the senior year and ranked second for
the four-year course.
The Charlottesville school board an
nounced it was assigning 11 more Ne
groes to the two schools integrated a
year ago. Four were assigned to Lane
High, making a total of seven Negroes
there. The others will go to Venable
Elementary, making a total of 13 there.
Two Negro students at Venable com
pleted the elementary grades this
spring and will go to an all-Negro high
school in the fall.
Negro applications for admittance to
white or predominantly white schools
include about 30 in Norfolk, 19 in War
ren County and 38 in Roanoke.
Norfolk and Warren County already
have some integration but Roanoke
does not. In Roanoke, a private school,
which expects to cover all grades from
kindergarten through high school, has
received a state charter.
EXPERIENCES ‘FRUSTRATION’
In Norfolk, the city school board told
federal district court that a Negro sev
enth grader in a predominantly white
school was experiencing “pressure and
frustration” in her studies and should
be returned to a Negro school in the
fall. She had been admitted to the
white school last fall under a court
order.
The board told the court that the
child “has tried hard” but “cannot cope
with and is failing English, math and
social studies.” The board said further
that the child had been treated “with
kindness and understanding by her
teachers and the children.” Publicity
concerning the case so upset the child
that she later was reported to be under
the care of a physician.
Resignations of the three members of
Virginia’s Pupil Placement Board be-
tired Methodist minister of Gulfport.
Cox said at a recent commision
meeting that the CRC had advised him
that a proposed constitutional amend
ment on “moral character” as a pre
requisite to registering to vote violates
the U. S. Constitution.
Briscoe noted that the proposed
amendment “doesn’t define what the
limits of morality are” but would give
registrars “an alibi” if pinned down for
excluding Negroes.
SUBMITS FIVE REASONS
Aaron Henry of Clarksdale, chair
man of the Regional Council of Negro
Leadership in Mississippi, submitted
five reasons to the state advisory group
as to why Negro voting is lax in many
counties:
1) Failure or fear of failure to meet
voting requirements.
2) Fear of economic reprisal.
3) Fear of physical violence.
4) Apathy.
5) Insufficient encouragement from
Negro leaders.
His report covered 48 of the 82 coun
ties. He said efforts to secure reports
from the other 34 counties were un
successful, including “those where Ne
gro registration is good.”
He told the state group, “I look for
ward to the day when reports from all
the counties are good.” # #
came effective June 1. They had been
in office since the board was established
three and a half years ago. Their suc
cessors have not been named.
In their closing report, board mem
bers A. A. Farley, Hugh V. White and
Beverley H. Randolph Jr. said that
their policy had been “to fight, with
every legal and honorable means, any
attempted mixing of races in the public
schools.”
They added:
“The board does not feel that it was,
nor should its successors feel that they
should be, obligated to take one posi
tive step toward the mixing of the races
in the public schools.”
Gov. Almond, in releasing the board's
report, said that the report, “in my
judgment, is in full accord with the
policies of the commonwealth.”
The board said that it had placed
605,762 children in the public schools,
that the parents of 597 children had
filed applications for placement “under
protest,” and that only 362 parents had
refused to sign applications.
The three board members tendered
their resignations Feb. 24 in protest
against the state’s new “freedom of
choice” program, which has replaced
“massive resistance.”
W&M PRESIDENT
Dr. Davis Y. Paschall, Virginia’s Su
perintendent of Public Instruction for
the past three
years, r e -
signed last month
to accept the pres-
idency of
the state-operated
College of Wil
liam and Mary at
Williamsburg. He
will succeed Al
vin Duke Chand
ler, who moves up
to the new posi
tion of chancellor of William and Mary
and its branches in Richmond, Nor
folk, Petersburg and Newport News.
In commenting on Dr. Paschall’s
“distinguished” service to the state, the
Richmond Times-Dispatch said that he
“was one of those responsible for the
fact that a small amount of mixed
schooling was reluctantly accepted in
the Old Dominion without the slightest
disorder.”
A total of 4,750 students received
state tuition grants—or “scholarships,”
as they are officially designated—during
the year just ended.
Of this total, 802 of the students used
the money for tuition at public schools
outside their home localities. The re
maining 3,948 went to private schools.
Pupils in 53 of the state’s 98 counties
and in 26 of the 32 cities received the
grants, which were originally intended
as an anti-integration device. Integra
tion has occurred in six Virginia locali
ties. Thirteen children in Princess
Anne County, where schools are seg
regated, used the grants to attend in
tegrated schools in Norfolk.
SREB PROPOSAL
Establishment of a lay commission to
set major goals for higher education in
the South has been proposed by the
executive committee of the Southern
Regional Education Board. A resolu
tion calling for such a commission was
# adopted by the committee June 14
PASCHALL
Following two weeks of sit-in dem
onstrations in the area, a number of
northern Virginia stores desegregated
their eating facilities late in June with
out incident. An F. W. Woolworth
store in Arlington County was the first,
and it was quickly followed by another
variety store chain, a restaurant chain,
and two drug store chains in that
county and in adjacent Fairfax Coun
ty.
Prince Edward Academy, Prince Ed
ward County’s private segregated high
school, graduated 55 students last
month, as leaders of the private school
system announced plans for a $300,000
drive for funds for construction of new
buildings.
Aside from the capital funds drive,
the Prince Edward School Foundation
adopted a 1960-61 operating budget of
$333,359 to provide classes for an esti
mated 1,400 white children. Students
are expected to pay tuition largely
from state-local grants. Tuition will be
$240 in the lower school and $265 in
the high school.
Meanwhile, white citizens of the
county who comprise Southside Schools,
Inc., for the second time offered to
help Negroes set up a private school
system for their children in Prince Ed
ward. A similar offer last December
drew only one application.
CLOSE LIBRARY
Danville voters, in a referendum June
14, expressed preference for keeping
the city’s public libraries closed rather
than allowing them to be integrated, as
ordered by a federal district court.
The vote was 2,829 for keeping the
libraries closed, against 1,598 for open
ing them on an integrated basis. The
referendum was advisory only. On the
day following the referendum, the city
council voted five to four against re
opening the libraries. Council had
closed the libraries May 20 just prior
to the effective date of the court order
for integration.
The Danville Library Foundation,
composed of citizens opposing integra
tion of the public facilities, has leased
a large red brick residence and pro
poses to convert it into a private segre
gated library.
UNION UPHOLDS
The Textile Workers Union of Amer
ica, in biennial convention in Chicago,
upheld a committee ruling that the
Front Royal, Va., local had violated the
union constitution by offering financial
aid to a segregated private school
(Southern School News, June 1960.)
However, the convention agreed to
allow the local to request, if it desires
to do so, that an outside arbitrator
make a final decision on the question.
The issue arose when Local 371
which has both white and Negro mem
bers, voted to invest $8,000 in deben
tures of the Front Royal Academy and
to furnish a $500 annual scholarship a 1
the school.
In other racial developments in Vir
ginia in June:
• The board of directors of Defend
ers of State Sovereignty and Individual
Liberties, in session at Blackston*
adopted a resolution calling for an in
vestigation of the Congress on Racial
Equality and “other such organization-’
that are stirring racial foment” in th e
state. The investigation would be mad'
by the House Un-American Activity
Committee.
• Faced with a demand for inte
grated use of the public swimminf
pool, the Hopewell City Council decided
to lease the facility to a private group
for continued operation on a segregate"
at basis. # # f